 Nice trailer. Thank you very much Good morning. Bonjour to Salamat buggy. Where does that is? Hello So I want to talk to you today about something very interesting You know, I've been looking at the turf of sustainability for a long time and five years ago People started asking me about how technology will be humanly sustainable In other words when we're constantly connecting on 5g networks with augmented reality and brain computer interfaces Are we still human? Is that sustainable? So I wrote a book on this technology versus humanity. It's available in 10 languages I have a couple of free copies with me but basically In this world, you know, this is really what I do as a futurist. I Don't predict the future. I observe the future. I think it's become very important the last few years because God knows We're living in a crazy time Every week there's a new innovation coming up. I always say science fiction is becoming science fact Language control voice computing with the computer so-called conversational computing Thinking machines artificial intelligence flying drones drone taxis The future is no longer about tomorrow. The future is here We just haven't paid attention The future is now a mindset And I think if you work in sustainability, we're talking about, you know circular thinking the mindset has to be futuristic And we're talking about not 50 years, you know five years That is a very important part When we look at the future we get this a lot I don't know what you're feeling is about the future But in the last three or four years most people are worried about the future And it's not just climate change. There's a few other topics politics, which I won't touch because you know We'll take a long time But the other one is robots machines Intelligent computers first they will take our jobs and then they will kill us Okay That's that that's the message So we're not going to have a nice planet. We're not going to have any work. We're not going to be, you know Fulfilled by our work But I'm going to tell you that I think the future is better than we think I mean the things that we have achieved With technology and of course without are quite mind-boggling Just on a practical level think about this if you have kids in other countries now We can use what's apt to make free phone calls 10 years ago It would have been I know two francs a minute here from switzerland to call somebody in indonesia So now it's free now music is 10 euros for 21 million songs And the list goes on so i'm going to give you a widely optimistic view of the future in the next 20 years We're going to see this because of science and technology. We're going to address food shortages We're going to stop or even reverse global warming That is wildly optimistic We're going to look at diseases genetic engineering distillation of water Technology will be there just like it is there now for so many things The only thing that we have to do here And this is wildly pessimistic We have to govern it wisely We have to govern technology wisely and science Because now we're inventing things that can be both heaven and hell Like any technology really Look at for example artificial intelligence the idea of thinking machines The idea of genetic engineering of humans geo engineering the weather Sounds like science fiction is not You heard about the chinese doctor right three months ago First operation ever To avoid the kids having hiv the doctor cut a gene in the germ line of the babies He's in jail now. I think Maybe some fancy jail. I don't know but So it's a huge issue right if we have to govern wisely. What is the next step? I think our world is going to change more in the next 20 years in the previous 300 years If you think this is crazy, I think about this right industrial evolution world war two the internet atomic bomb All of these things last 300 years, but now Technology is coming and changing us When you use the smartphone it changes the way you think When you use augmented reality, which is very soon going to be a standard just like, you know, the mobile phone is a standard Your vision is the way you're thinking is changing and then your body is changing because now we have nanobots in the bloodstream Check in your cholesterol That's not science fiction already exists FTC or improved or FDA sorry FDA approved Technology already exists to change our genes a drug called cumbria by Novartis for the $80,000 We're going to change who we are as humans And some people are saying, you know that as humans we're kind of a lame duck, you know, so we have to change I don't quite agree, but Clearly, this is the future humans and technology are converging And we have to ask this question. How far do we want to go? How sustainable would it be? If we become superhuman I mean who this room does not want to be superhuman? I think there are a few But if I ask a question in california Silicon Valley, no, we want we want to be superhuman. Of course we want to be superhuman and of course, you know have super amount of fun but In this handshake between technology and humanity The question for me is are we sometimes confusing the purpose, which is humanity with the tool Take facebook social media. Most of you are probably on facebook, right? Facebook is distorting the meaning of friendship because facebook is an AI, right? Facebook is an algorithm That feeds you back What keeps you there the longest? It has no intent whatsoever to to actually furnish a real conversation. It does that by accident sometimes Facebook has become the purpose of life for a lot of people And that's kind of the reverse the technology is not sustainable. Look at the growth of technology in all different segments I mean, we're living at the pivot point in history where all the stuff that was science fiction like energy storage robotics genome sequencing Now just boom exploding consider yourself lucky We're going to solve issues for example through the lab grown meat You think that's a joke but you know Richard Branson and Bill Gates do not they have invested in lab grown meat That they sell right now. It's about two thousand dollars a pound You know in growing the lab at actual meat. They say in 10 years. It'll be one tenth of regular meat Would that solve the problem with food? Yeah, probably would contribute to that I'm not sure you want to taste that but give it a try sometime genetic engineering I don't know, you know moral ethical issues But clearly we're going to be able soon or later to get everybody in the world to have the genome tested I mean imagine what that means that we can actually track where diseases come from we can prevent we can predict And maybe we can change One of these days. I mean that is a crazy thought. There's already companies in Silicon Valley talk about the end of dying I think for most Europeans that would be like, oh, yeah, I'm not so sure that's a good idea But you know, it's probably a big business But is it sustainable? So what's happening in our future really is clearly three things See, I want to point out first and we have to think about this first the future is exponential I mean we're changing at Moore's law Metcalfe's law pace You know the next five years will not just be five six seven. They'll be eight 1632 And they will come in a tutorial which means all the sciences coming together to create new solutions I mean look at companies like airbnb that wouldn't have been possible with Out all of these things and then the industries are converging For example information technology and health care is converging Companies like russia norverges and then other companies that will be become technology companies and technology companies will become Companies that cover health care like apple and amazon and others So remember those three things exponential combinatorial convergent And within that lies the key to sustainability Imagine the things that we can do here If we set our mind to it take this formula ex combinatorial convergence And put circular on top I think that's the answer that we can pull up I mean of course, yeah optimism. Yes, but clearly we're going to see here and these sort of game changing world These are the eight game changers that are treated my book Data the cloud the internet of things and so on and these are the companies that make money with those game changers You know the most powerful companies in the world today They're not all in gas or banking or even the military Well, some of those are the same obviously But who are the most powerful companies in the world data companies? Social network search engines media platforms. What's called platformization? The top four companies on this list have more money than the gdp or friends They could buy friends But Just as an idea, you know I mean mind boggling how we see this development. So let me show you this short video to see what these companies are think Of course, I remember the code. It's four four five two Four four sky looks amazing. I look amazing. I should take a selfie. Did I forget to lock the front door? Hey, google Hi, what can I do for you? This is a google commercial that ran and doing the oscars in the us And the key message is this if you don't know what to do ask google And we do ask google all the time of course google maps and so on but imagine the magis the mad message saying that you know We don't have to think anymore. We can just say, you know, google find me a wife or figure out if I can have kids Or you know, how long is trump going to be president? Whatever we can ask all these questions All right, I'll be a short question shouldn't answer to this but but Here's my point of this too much of a good thing is a very bad thing And we know that with all drugs, of course, right? My technology is kind of a drug Too much of a good thing is a bad thing and that's unsustainable for us I mean imagine if we're left in the world where everything that we have asked the questions for we're going to ask some machine to tell us I mean, are we going to still know who we are and we're going to get out of bed in the morning and say, hey google, who the hell am I? Can you tell me what is the purpose of my life? So really what's happening is that we have a second level of sustainability end of pollution I call that digital pollution And I'm a biggest polluter myself using it So I don't know very well what it feels like but what we are seeing today is essentially the side effects of digitization loneliness Connectivity problems that we always have to be connected. We put the machine over the human We we have more relationships with the screen than we have with people And this is only the beginning because technology is still pretty lame Believe me in the next 10 years We're going to see a a boost that you would not believe 5g will allow you to download a movie in one second And be on a virtual conference room in a hologram somewhere in the middle of the mountains So here's the bottom line on this When we look at this in order to address the unintended consequences the externalities of technology We're going to need new ethics values public debate corporate accountability Because this In 10 years will be much much bigger today. It's some of us worried about these things like addiction to cell phones In 10 years, it'll just be everywhere In fact, I think in 10 years we can live in a virtual world. We don't actually have to really exist Because we can connect to the internet to the mobile networks and this becomes a very big Discussion I've put forth in my book the creation of a digital ethics council Let's call it the digital circular council Think about the circular economy in a digital way I mean we need this we don't just need a council that talks about digitization and transformation and you know All of these things that everybody talks about. I mean digital transformation is the biggest hoax you can imagine I mean everything is going to be digital right say anything left. It's not going to be digital except for the top of Mount Everest not even there We need this and there's a great code from Tim Cook the CEO of Apple In Brussels just a little while ago Technology can do great things But it does not want to do great things. It doesn't want anything That is so true It's just you know, it's just a code. It's a robot. It's a machine It's not conscious and it shouldn't be If we want technology to do the right thing We have to make it do the right thing Just like we're doing with energy and other issues like this and this is becoming existential Imagine a machine with an IQ of a million That is the reality in 25 years An IQ in terms of processing not in terms of emotions or so, right? I mean we're going to move into a really crazy world. So I I've come up with this new thing that I'm working on I think our economic system is unfit for this kind of future Why it's probably unfit for the kind of presence as well but Four points here people planet purpose prosperity I think this is the new mantra of the stock market in less than 15 years And I've been telling the Swiss government to have a stock market like that here the quadruple bottom line Because I think that within 20 years our economic logic will change completely And when we talk about work, right? This is one of the topics we want to talk about today We're going to start separating work for money Basic income has been discussed in Switzerland quite a bit There's no way around that in the next two decades and we can fund it too Because we'll have abundant technology to support it So this is a real challenge for us, you know technology doesn't care about our desires and it has no ethics I mean this is code, right? It's binary. Why would it care? But we have to care about ethics and what we want Simple definition. It's the difference between what you have a right or the power to do And what is the right thing to do? Of course, the right thing to do isn't exactly a trivial question I mean talking about finding an answer to that, right? But now moving into a future That's going from the simple thought of saying if we're going to do something How much does it cost and you know, does it work and all these kind of things now we're going to why We're doing something and who It's becoming a key question I think we'll see all the initiatives around us. We're moving to the cloud We're moving to a world where everything is going to be in here Our healthcare records our media Our music everything And artificial intelligence clearly is moving in this direction first sort of Trivial existence, you know intelligent assistance ia and then moving into a future where machine can be generally intelligent And this last point is like a moratorium waiting to happen I'm all four machines that can be clever to help us to assist us, but I'm not four machines that can be like us I think that sounds like a death wish to me, you know 20 30 years, you know, we'll have to deal with that part So the biggest risk in our near future And particularly when it's about work that we may actually gain total control of technology and unlimited power But we're going to use it wrong Like we will not distribute the positive benefits We will not make it accessible. We will not not do the things that we have to do So I need to come to the end So I'm going to wrap a little bit quicker here than than I I want to really but automation is a huge issue Right when we think about what's happening. That's much bigger issue than globalization routine I mean every routine that we know will be done by machines sooner or later. I call this the end of routine And I think that's terrible for people that only do routine Like it's very few actually like maybe check out the supermarket Things like that, but driving not sure The end of routine is not the end of work It's just the end of routine imagine if you can outsource your routine to a smart machine Would you feel like you're useless? Now you would feel like you can do other things The end of the routine is not the end of human work because this is the truth about us as humans There's a lot more to human intelligence than to a computer Gardner says research Organization roughly eight or nine different types of human intelligence emotional social kinesthetic What kind of intelligence does the computer have? I mean if you've seen the movie her You know it has only one intelligence which is computing processing And that will be much bigger than we could ever dream of But does it understand anything does it have emotional awareness? Does it have what it takes in the future? I think when we talk about thinking machines We have to say what my my colleague paul saffo says don't mistake a clear view for a short distance They will come They are here now, but only on the lowest level I would have to think about this a little bit different because this is what we do right Data information is not knowledge. It's not understanding. It's not wisdom is not purpose. It is just data And this will be crucial for us to use in the future So I'll summarize and basically I would like to share with you that I think today Our biggest challenge is not the machines will kill us or take over the world Is that we become too much like them? We get too lazy to think And we rely on this we we constantly hooked up on it We forget what we really want because for humans the only thing that matters for humans was mentioned before trust relationships Engagement experiences You know like this Computers are like this They see this tiny segment and they can calculate forever, but we're like this So that's I think why we make a good match So bottom line is our future could be heaven or it could be hell I am 90% sure today that it will be heaven Call me an optimist I think technology wise we have all the tools that we need We just need to agree how to use them and if you know companies in this turf, of course We have the power to actually change the paradigms as we can see that pretty much happen in technology today We're moving into a future where those two things, you know the algorithms technology And what I call the android rhythms the human things They're going to be equally important Because these skills that we have as humans there will never be replaced by machines at least I don't think it's a good idea to strive for that I wouldn't want a machine that has you know imagination or real creativity So I think that's where we're going. That's what our future is in a world that's dominated by technology We must become more human That to me is the answer to the future of work We can't beat computers at computing We're not going to beat computers at doing all those routine works But we can't beat them at being more human And this is really important when we think about work for education. What do our kids have to learn in school? Should they learn how to run a spreadsheet Or calculate ROI Or even get an MBA Or should they just have experiences Should they be creative? Should there be thinkers? Should there be philosophers? So I really believe that you know in this game We have the same cards and ever before We're just humans. We're not exponential We need to invest as much in humanity as we do in technology That's the future of work That's the future of of our own happiness, I believe and finally the statement from my book that we should embrace technology But not become technology Because when our technology, you're a commodity. Thanks very much for listening